In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads—in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. — Jacques Barzun

The Dictatorship of the Pastorate

On a quiet Sunday morning in June, as worshippers settled into the pews at Allen Baptist Church in southwestern Michigan, Pastor Jason Burrick grabbed his cellphone and dialed 911. When a dispatcher answered, the preacher said a former congregant was in the sanctuary. “And we need to, um, have her out A.S.A.P.”

Half an hour later, 71-year-old Karolyn Caskey, a church member for nearly 50 years who had taught Sunday school and regularly donated 10% of her pension, was led out by a state trooper and a county sheriff’s officer. One held her purse and Bible. The other put her in handcuffs.

The charge was trespassing, but Mrs. Caskey’s real offense, in her pastor’s view, was spiritual. Several months earlier, when she had questioned his authority, he’d charged her with spreading “a spirit of cancer and discord” and expelled her from the congregation. “I’ve been shunned,” she says.

In some cases, people have been thrown out for sinning. (In one egregious case, a woman who confessed privately to the pastor that she had had an affair was publicly humiliated and thrown out for adultery.) But the chief charges tend to be sowing discord, refusing to respect church elders, and disagreeing with the pastor.

Last week, the pastor of a 6,000-member megachurch in Nashville, Tenn., threatened to expel 74 members for gossiping and causing disharmony unless they repented. The congregants had sued the pastor for access to the church’s financial records.

The Wall Street Journal misses an important element behind many of these stories. Many of these are “seeker” churches, churches that aim to reach out to the unchurched. (See the web page for Watermark Community Church in Dallas, one of those mentioned in the article.) The ideology of the church growth movement that inspires these churches places all authority in the senior pastor. It advocates, in a phrase, the dictatorship of the pastorate. Poor Karolyn Caskey was thrown out, not because of a sin, but because she insisted that the new pastor follow the church by-laws and appoint a board of deacons to manage the church rather than taking all power for himself. The 75 members of Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville who unsuccessfully sued the church, concerned that the pastor would not disclose financial records and convinced that he had paid for personal trips and his daughter’s wedding out of church funds, are now being threatened with expulsion. This simply takes to a new level the savage strategy for dealing with resisters that these churches employ.

The dismissal of the Nashville lawsuit sends a clear message: Pastors, especially in unaffiliated churches, can do anything they want with the money their parishioners donate to them.

My advice: Don’t pledge to such churches, or pledge a nominal amount, and give money only to specific programs and projects run by people you know and trust.